I have successfully dropped Rob back at his college. I told him I wanted to leave at 9:00 a.m. and we were on our way by 9:45, which is better than the year I said 9:00 and he wasn’t ready until noon. Progress.
On our way there, he realized he had forgotten:
• sheets
• comforter
• pillow
• shaving cream
• laundry detergent
• the frying pan he’d told his roommates he would bring
• which, as it turns out, he thought they wanted a baking pan rather than a frying pan
• so it’s just as well he forgot it
• and who knows what else he’ll realize over the next days/weeks he’s also forgotten
He is 22 years old, and I have made a CONSCIOUS EFFORT to gradually back off over the years, so that he will be ready to launch. When he was getting ready for his first year of college, I helped him make a list; the second year, I asked if he wanted me to print out a copy of the list; after that, I assumed he now HAD the list and/or knew he COULD HAVE the list, and/or could use that as a basis for his own list. The first year, I went over the list with him: “Do you have this? How about this? Did you pack that? It’s a good idea to have a separate little list for last-minute items”—but after that, I assumed he understood that method and could do it himself. This year is his FIFTH, and I did nothing except tell him what time we were leaving, because he is a grown adult and can manage his own life—and he forgot a whole CATEGORY of crucial things, and when I said “WHAT?? HOW??” he said it was hard to remember everything. I said “This is WHY I MAKE LISTS.” I didn’t just say that. We were driving at 65mph and he was trapped in the car with me and I had plenty of time, so I went on at some length, with examples.
The journey itself was…okay. Many of the rest stops were closed, which not only meant I had to plan more carefully, but also meant that the remaining rest stops were very crowded. There were signs everywhere saying face masks were REQUIRED indoors for all, REGARDLESS of vaccination status. About half of the people indoors were not wearing masks; even quite a few employees were unmasked. There was no enforcement of the mask policy at all. I heard a lot of coughing, including loud extended coughing sessions that would have caught my attention even in non-pandemic times. We used the restrooms as quickly as possible, then got food and took it outside to eat at our car.
The hotel, too, had large signs saying everyone must be masked indoors except when they were in their own rooms; the signs asked that guests consider their own safety, but also the safety of hotel staff, and of other guests. The hotel’s desk clerk, standing in front of one of those signs, was not masked. About half of the other guests I saw were unmasked. I saw several members of the cleaning staff; they were all masked. I left a big tip for housecleaning.
I usually like to go to the mall’s Food Court to get dinner (especially if I have kids with me, so we can all choose our own food and don’t have to agree on one place), and almost all of the Food Court restaurants were closed—not just closed for the night, but closed as in stripped of signs and everything inside. There was a pizza/subs place and a coffee-and-ice-cream place and the rest of it was empty and dark. It was unsettling and upsetting.
After I dropped off Rob and his stuff, I found I was very, very, very twitchy. I sometimes get pretty twitchy at that point of the process anyway, and I don’t know what it is—especially since I SO look forward to the time alone, and then there I am, my mission accomplished and hours of happy alone time stretching ahead of me, and that’s when sometimes I get a very unpleasant feeling. Long ago, when I was trying therapy, I described the feeling to a psychiatrist and she nodded and said “Panic,” and wrote me a prescription. So I guess it’s panic. But WHY panic, is the question. When I was describing it to the therapist, it had been happening at a similar sort of time: I’d arrange to leave my small children with their father and go out for some time by myself, and I’d be out by myself, and instead of feeling wonderful and free I would feel like everything was scary and full of potential doom, and the store would feel eerie/creepy and as if something bad were about to happen, and the light felt wrong both indoors and out, and I would feel skittery and unhappy and heart-poundy and I would just want to GET OUT OF THERE and get back home. Which as you can imagine is very discouraging if you have been just about PERISHING for some alone time and you finally get some and then you hate it.
Anyway, it still sometimes happens. I’d thought it might happen this time in particular, since I knew I’d already be a little pre-twitchy with pandemic-related things. I wish I’d thought to bring along one of the several take-as-needed medications I’ve hoarded since that time in therapy, but I hadn’t. (NEXT TIME IT WILL BE ON MY LIST.) Instead I tried the 4-7-8 yoga breathing, but the holding-my-breath segment made me feel frantic so I stopped that, and instead talked quietly and kindly to myself (easier with a mask, where it’s harder for other people to tell you’re doing it): “You’re fine. You’re fine! This is all completely fine. Nothing is wrong, and everything is fine. This is the feeling of panic, but it is panic on its own, with nothing scary happening to cause it. You thought you might feel weird like this, and you do, and you know from experience that soon you will not feel this way anymore. Let’s get you some dinner to take back to your nice comfy hotel room, and you can watch some HGTV while you eat and won’t THAT be nice! No, don’t just flee to the hotel room: I think dinner is going to be helpful.”
This is unfortunately when I drove to the Food Court to get some familiar comforting teriyaki chicken and rice, and found that place had gone out of business, as had all the other Food Court places where I like to get food. I went instead through the drive-through of a Taco Bell (the first familiar place I saw), chose pink lemonade as my drink (I love their pink lemonade, and I thought it would provide Comfort and Cheer as well as Hydration), took everything back up to my hotel room, turned on the TV, and tried to settle in. By the time I’d watched part of an episode of House Hunters (it was the one where SHE wants a charming fixer-upper with character and HE wants something brand-new with high ceilings, and he says something like “she has a lot of strong opinions about what she wants, but I want to make sure it’s a place that’s right for BOTH of us,” and so they compromise on…the place that is exactly what he wants, with nothing of what she wants, where in fact she specifically STATES that it is as if the agent chose it exclusively for him but with nothing for her, and in short I suggest she get out of this before they have kids), and eaten most of my familiar comforting food, and consumed the entire pink lemonade and refilled it with water and had some of that as well (I didn’t drink enough during the day, because I didn’t want to have to stop at too many rest areas), I was feeling okay again, and had a nice evening watching TV and eating candy.
Oh! An audiobook report! Thank you SO MUCH for all your recommendations—that is going to be an EXCELLENT reference for future trips, too. I made a list of the ones that sounded most likely, and then from those I selected what happened to be available on the shelf of my library: I picked a Maeve Binchy as planned, plus a David Sedaris, plus the John Green Anthropocene thing. I let Rob pick what he wanted to listen to on the way there, and he picked the David Sedaris, and we listened to the first part of three or four segments and then gave up on it. I’d made the mistake of choosing the “best of” one, and apparently David Sedaris’s own favorites (at least on the first disc) are the ones I skip/skim in his books: fake newsletters, fake Christmas card letters, fake reviews. My favorites are his real-life stories about his real life/family. I will choose better next time, and/or look ahead at what’s on which disc so I know which discs to listen to.
On the way home, I tried the John Green one and thought it was PERFECT for a road trip: interesting, soothing, no big deal if I don’t listen to the whole thing on one single trip. I listened to the first two discs, and then tried to put the third disc in, and the CD player said there was already a disc in there but failed to spit it out when I pressed eject (because there WAS NO disc in there), and I tried a bunch of different things (AFTER PULLING OVER of course) and nothing worked, and the CD player kept saying it was trying to read a disc that wasn’t in there, so then I had to listen to the radio for the rest of the trip, which is normally fine and I enjoy it, but this time I was comparing it to what I WANTED to be doing, which was to be listening to more of the John Green thing.
Well! It was fine! It was all fine! I am home safe and sound, and not at all fretting irritably about what else Rob might have forgotten to bring, or imagining that I feel my throat getting sort of…coughish.